20th November is International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Since TDOR 2011, an estimate 265 people have been murdered worldwide, solely because their gender identity or expression doesn't conform with their societies' expectations. As a queer woman, I face enough discrimination myself, but the simple fact that the way I present myself to the world matches what is expected of my biological sex means I am immune to this particularly vicious kind of hatred. Even among feminist communities there are those who do not accept transgender people, despite the fact that the struggles for women's liberation and transgender liberation are so closely linked.

I personally will be lighting a candle tomorrow and holding a minute's silence to remember all the lives tragically and brutally cut short by hatred and ignorance. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

_________________"Garth, marriage is punishment for stealing in some countries." - Wayne Campbell